NCHE AND UNIVERSITY HARMONISED SELECTION CUT OFF POINTS

[Limbani Nsapato]

Colleagues,

There are documents circulating on social media since yesterday
relating to university election cut off points. One of the documents
is providing feedback to a university student from Rumphi inquiring on
how he was not selected after scoring 14 points; the other doucment is
tabulating the cut off points which shows that districts like Chitipa,
Neno, Thyolo, Nsanje and Dedza had lower cut off points than Blantyre
and Lilongwe with 20 and 21 points respectively. I have attached these
documents.

Can NCHE confirm authenticity of these documents? And assuming they
are true, what was the rationale behind these cut off points? Does it
mean a student from a rural district is expected to do better than one
from the city? These are some of the questions i have.

Assuming that the documents are not true, i believe we need to have
measures to protect the public offices from spreading of fake
documents.

Cheers,

Limbani




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[Limbani Nsapato]

Bwana Kainja,
I agree with you. The fact that NCHE has not refuted the documents,
means that the documents are factual.
But we still need some explanation on how the cut off points were decided.

Regards,
Limbani

On 8/7/18, Kainja Jimmy <j.ka...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Limbani,
>
> There’s no better way of controlling “spreading of fake documents” than
> being transparent. Where is the policy document(s) on this? Is it publicly
> available? Do the public know how the cut points are determined?
>
> By the way, I think answers to the questions you’re asking should’ve been
> public knowledge before the policy was implemented. Even it strange that
> even those who defend the policy do so without having all the necessary
> information about the policy?
>
> The culture of secrecy within public institutions is the problem here not
> “spreading of fake documents”.
>
> My thoughts,
>
> Jimmy

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[chikondi maleta]

Limbani,  this whole thing needs a rethink. I am happy to help if need be.  By the way,  I take no side.  But available for the larger good. 

Chikondi 

[Mzondi W.J. Moyo]

Hello
i have never understood why UNIMA and now NCHE fail to understand the variables they use in selection. They need to understand that District of Origin is not the same as District of Residence. Their selection formula is based on district of origin and yet they the use district of residence for calculations of quota.Districts like LL and BT have a large net inflow of people from other districts resulting in a large total population. These people who have contributed to enlarging LL and BT population will have young competing through the district of origin.

In other words LL and BT gets large quota through a people who do not compete on the quota they have contributed to.
A simple fact that should have been known.

Establish population by district of origin for each and then use in the quota allocation

mzondi
--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 8/7/18, chikondi maleta <chikm...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: [BwalolaAphunzitsi] NCHE AND UNIVERSITY HARMONISED SELECTION CUT OFF POINTS
To: "bwalo-la-...@googlegroups.com" <bwalo-la-...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "highere...@googlegroups.com" <highere...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2018, 7:00 PM

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[Richard Nyirongo]

Ida and Phillip,

What Ida described is probably what it would have been without factoring in the QUOTA. But the bigger question is where is the QUOTA policy document? I believe it should have been a public document. The fact that there are differing stories about it says a lot about the policy itself and its inherent objectives.

Richard 

On Wednesday, August 8, 2018, 3:46:51 PM GMT+2, Phillip Kapulula <pkap...@cc.ac.mw> wrote:

The contribution from Ida Mbendera is closest to the reality of selection in Unima.

Phillip

On Wed, 8 Aug 2018, 15:43 Ida Mbendera, <idamb...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am a bit confused with the 'fake' documents. Are we saying that no students who scored above 14 points from Rumphi or the other districts with a lower cutoff point were selected?
Does it mean all individuals selected from these districts whether they wanted to study education humanities or engineering scored eg 14 points and below?
I always had the impression that different programs have different cut off points depending on the demand/popularity of the program and the availability of space as determined by the hosting faculty or college.
I also thought selection on the whole is dependant on the student's choice of program and whether or not the student's MSCE grades include the relevant subjects for the chosen discipline. For example if a student wants to study engineering and has 10 points but her best six subjects are BK, English, Chichewa, Agriculture, Social Studies and Biology, she will not make it into engineering despite the 10 points.
It would help if NCHE or those in the know enlightened us on the selection criteria beyond the 'quota'. I believe quota is one criterion but there are other criteria.

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[King Kapito]

This conversation reminds me of Gaokao, Chinese public universities entrance exams. Candidates from major metropolitan cities eg Beijing and Shanghai have a lower average passing mark than those from other provinces. It didn't make sense to me considering that big cities have many privileges like good schools and yet the system seems to favor them. There is an interesting factor to this though and it has to do with population. The higher the population a city or a province has, the lower the mark for candidates. It seems that this is similar to our scenario here, only that all public universities are national. If we had regional or district universities, those left out of national universities admissions would be admitted in these second tier universities. I personally would like to know what constitutes "place of origin" in this QS debate. If Zomba, for instance, is my ancestral place, I'm a native there munthu oti ndinabadwira ku Ntcheu? If I was born in Ntcheu, I'm a native of Ntcheu basi. 

[Limbani Nsapato]

Colleagues,
After following debates on the selection policy, these are my
conclusions based on discussions here and also in social media:

1. Everything equal, traditional merit is the best way of selecting
students to public universities.
2. Due to limited space and huge disparities in the learning
environment in the education system from pre-school, primary and
secondary schools across district and regions, quota system which
prioritizes merit is more favoured than pure traditional merit;
3. Pure merit in the face of disparities in resources is pure
discrimination against students who come from poor families and
under-resourced institutions eg Community Day Secondary
schools(CDSSs).
4. Two high level court cases against university of Malawi (High Court
1993 and Supreme Court 2011) on quota system were dismissed in favour
of the University on technicalities. This may mean that our legal
system would be in favour of decisions by University management on the
selection policy adopted.
5. Current quota system has put priority on females, children with
disabilities and district of origin.
6. Given the cut off points that leaked those against quota think that
using district of origin as one of the criteria is not favourable and
seems to target a particular tribe or tribes; it looks like most would
be okey with district of residence or if cut off point were equal
across all districts.
7. Many think that whatever system is adopted, brilliant students who
have scored superior points (eg 6 to 15 points at MSCE) should be
selected automatically.
8. Many also think that something needs to be done to expand
university space in order to ensure that everyone who qualifies with
the eligible points from 6 to 36 points (six credits) should be
enrolled in university. It was noted that in case of recent selection
(2017-2018) of the 14,843 eligible students, only 4772 were selected,
leaving out 10,071 most of whom could have come from poorly resourced
schools like CDSS and rural schools.
9. In my opinion, by way of final conclusion and recommendation, a
transformed quota system should be in place which should not be seen
to target anyone based on tribe or district of origin. This system
should change district of origin to district of residence as basis; it
should have special quota for top brilliant students (scoring between
6 to 15 points; or 20% of the best students using Pareto Analysis
principle), a special quota for students from CDSS and rural
schools/districts (also at 20% using Pareto Analysis Principle) ;
reserve a minimum of 10 spaces for each district (and take into
account population size of district) and should maintain the current
affirmative action for females (50/50) and persons with disabilities
(quota equal to a minimum of 10%) among others. In addition,
government should invst more in education to expand university
infrastructure and space, or construct additional universities, in
order to move towards offering universal higher education to all
those eligible. Furthermore, government should immediately address
disparities in the education system from pre-school to secondary
school by ensuring equal access to all enabling inputs including
qualified teachers, textbooks, classrooms and expenditure per student.
10. Finally, there should be equitable access to opportunities in
other fields eg employment, politics etc.

Other ideas are welcome.

Regards,

Limbani

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[Limbani Nsapato]

Hi Chomora and Louis,
Indeed, lets have more conversation on the suggestions, so that we can
come up with a proposal that can be used for improvements over the
equitable selection policy for our public universities. I will in the
course of the day repackage it in a word file and send it so that
people can include commentaries and tracked changes to aid the
"tweaking here and there".

Cheers,
Limbani


On 8/9/18, Louis Nthenda <louisn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Bwana Limbani,
> Impressive and carefully crafted.
> Can we use this as a basis for further tweaking here and there to turn it
> into a practical tool?
>
> On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 5:30 PM Steve Sharra <steve...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Adamson S. Muula <amu...@medcol.mw>
>> Date: Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 8:28 AM
>> Subject: Re: [BwalolaAphunzitsi] NCHE AND UNIVERSITY HARMONISED
>> SELECTION CUT OFF POINTS

>> To: steve sharra <steve...@gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> Please read this:
>> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/08/edinburgh-glasgow-universities-allocate-remaining-scottish-clearing/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_em

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>>
>>
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